


life throws you curves but you've learned to swerve

by r1ker



Category: Margin Call (2011)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-08
Updated: 2016-02-08
Packaged: 2018-05-19 05:18:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5955064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/r1ker/pseuds/r1ker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>sam buries ella, while john unearths a great deal more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> thanks rascal flatts 4 the title, and margin call for the feels

Sam's been digging for what feels like hours. No matter how hard he works, the hole isn't getting deep enough, wide enough, to bear the body of his best friend. The handle keeps slipping from his hands – despite the night being cold he's still sweating out of what he'd have to guess was anxiety, he didn't think he was going to be doing this until he was _actually doing it_ – and his nose won't stop running.

 

All in all, this isn't one of his finer moments.

 

Ella lies in a bag somewhere behind him, and just to get her where she is now took every ounce of strength from him. The first time he tried grabbing her body bag it slipped from her hand due to blind terror overcoming him. There was his dog, in a fucking bag instead of right beside him licking at his hand like she was wont to do, and no matter how hard he tried and paid and hoped she wasn't going to be coming back.

 

Shit, now he's crying again after he had willed himself earlier to stop, tears dripping down his nose and falling into the damp earth beneath his feet and his spade. He's just about to throw in the towel, dump Ella in and hope for the best, when he hears the sound of car brakes being applied behind him, a car door opening, footsteps coming closer.

 

"Sam," someone says a few feet above where the grave he digs causes him to sink lower into the ground. By the tempo and cadence he knows it's John here with him. Why it's John and not anyone else – who else would it be, defeats that thought fleetingly – baffles him as he drops his head down, closes his eyes like doing this will take him away from this place in an instant.

 

John kneels down a little so he can get a hand around the handle of the shovel, wrenches a little to pull it from Sam's trembling hand. He tosses the shovel aside and takes Sam's free hand to urge him to stand.

 

Sam follows him and gets out of the grave, lets John ease the bag containing Ella into its place. John shovels a few piles of dirt over the bag, slowly until it's completely covered and the grass around it no longer as disturbed, and the two step back.

 

"You don't have to do that, John," he urges, voice shaking along with every inch of him. He was doing fine until John stepped in, and since he was the one that started this, he ought to finish it.

 

John sighs and continues to dig, takes care in making sure the hole does not gain width when it ought to gain depth. "I've gone far too long not having to do things. I should be doing them." But why? John had no attachment to her, didn't help take care of her or even acknowledge her when Sam brought her up in the conversations they had earlier on. He doesn't understand, can't understand when he's still wrapped up in this.

 

Sam can't stop crying, he wants to dig her back up and exchange anything for her to come back. He wasn't allowed a great deal after his divorce, instead forging a new life through proper management and a get-by attitude, but Ella was given to him. That dog was all he had for weeks until he got settled into his new house, sleeping atop his feet when his makeshift sheets weren't doing the job real ones ought to be doing, eating his dinner when depression took away the ability to eat more than two bites, making a pillow when the urge to go to sleep was too powerful to let him go to his rightful place in his bed.

 

Now he will have to make something from actual nothing. Despite his ex-wife being in the home feet from where he and John stand, he has nothing allotted to him now that's not dead and in the ground.

 

"You didn't make her sick," John reassures like Sam already knows that, had to tell himself a thousand times over that it was just the consequence of too much time elapsing, taking its toll. Still he feels responsible, maybe he could have gone the distance and found another vet to look at her, but even then, there was a chance he'd get the same verdict and hope for another sentence. He pauses before he speaks again, lets out another breath like he's slowly coming up on being exasperated.

 

"She was really important to me, John," Sam reiterates, this time aloud, to John's noise of acknowledgement. While John wasn't concerned with Sam's personal affairs outside of the thing they once shared but don't speak of now, he knows what it's like to have important figures. To him, Sam was one. Sam was true north, he was a point John could return to if his behaviors caused him to stray from the path. Not a great deal of people in his life could do that – now that he thinks of it, no one really did, just Sam – and if this is the way he is to repay Sam for taking so much earlier, it'll have to do. "You wouldn't know what that means."

 

Sam reads minds, if you had to ask John. He's able to pick up on perceptions no mortal being could, take the minutiae and blow it up into an amalgamation of conclusions and observations, use that to his judgment in the end. Sam's not wrong, John will never understand the dynamic between a man and his pet, despite John knowing everything about what it was like to have Sam to himself. Those years were short, it wasn't a fairytale romance by any part, but from what he can remember he could have done a great deal with Sam, they'd have used the money for bettering rather than destroying, but instead they went with what felt right at the moment, though now it doesn't feel right at all.

 

All this over Sam's beloved dog being buried by John. Sometimes it's the little things that expose quite a bit, John concludes as he steps close enough to Sam to allow their shoulders to brush. Sam still shakes with lingering tears, wiping them from his cheeks with hands dirtied by the handle of the shovel.

 

"Come with me," John insists quietly with one hand resting on Sam's shoulder blade. It's warm and what he hopes is reassuring, and he can feel the strong jut of it even through Sam's leather coat, knowing his structure well from the past. The hand's fingers curl around the structure and grip, Sam leaning blindly into his touch like he did all those years ago.

 

Sam is forged from iron, John will wholeheartedly conclude should someone ask him the question, but done with clay, easy to deconstruct on the surface but tough to break at his core. He's everything John wishes he had been as he matured.

 

The two walk back to John's car, John going the extra mile to open the back door for Sam to climb in. They haven't yet mended the bridge that would allow them to ride in the front of the same car together so they will begin here, first establishing the meaning of this by sitting in the back. There, John sits next to him, a sizeable gap between their thighs, his hand resting there against the upholstery.

 

Sam takes unsteady breaths, worn from his tears and exhausted through and through, and John knows the feeling well from his own life experiences. It's a kind of tiredness you can't shake with a good night's rest and strong cup of coffee. It's all consuming, not curable but able to be coped with as you slowly work your way out of it. There it still sleeps in your bones until it is agitated, awakened once more to ravage.

 

"I'm sorry about Ella," John apologizes softly, as if there are others in the car that will intrude. Sam nods without saying a word, not having the strength to thank him for words that sound considerate at heart. He wants to go home and try to sleep, get back to work to clean the mess both of them helped to make. That's all he feels he's good at, taking the disastrous and reconfiguring to tolerable. "I know you loved her, and she knew you loved her. If all you take away from this is the love you two shared, that says more than you know."

 

Again Sam tips his head in dissent, there was no doubting that he was Ella's favorite no matter if there was a wife and a son in the picture, but he can't shake the feeling of emptiness no matter how long he dwells on all the good that did happen while she was alive.

 

He remembers the day he brought Ella to her new home, a pink bow still around her neck from the rather eclectic shelter he found her at, nipping at his heels as he walked in to introduce Mary and their little boy their new family member. That was the happiest he'd seen Mary aside from a bouquet or a newborn in her arm, a ring on her finger or a glass of champagne being balanced alongside a piece of their wedding cake.

 

Even when what they had began to sour, numbers already being drawn up to begin divorce proceedings, Ella was solid ground. They both settled greatly in her presence, taking turns throwing her toys and pressing gentle hands to her fur, and for all the while it seemed like she was the glue holding them together. Until that glue crumbled and revealed the breaks and divides, Sam really thought Ella was going to keep them together forever.

 

"I loved her, and she loved me no matter what," Sam all out whispers in response. It was true, perhaps the truest thing he's got to hold onto right now at this point in his life. "And I don't know where to go from here. Do I – do I get another and hope they can fill the void?" He's just speaking out loud right now, not really meaning for any of it to make sense to John in any context.

 

"You recover," John corrects, knowing that Sam won't be able to love any animal until he acknowledges the fact that Ella was who she was and unfortunately is no longer here. "You take time to heal, learn what it was that made Ella such a stunning part of your life, and you hope that whoever else comes along can hope to measure up, not equal, the same. Once someone comes into your life, leaves their mark then regretfully has to leave, you can't expect to find something else to fill the hole. That's not how it works, at least for me anyway."

 

Here he goes again, thinking hopelessly of how Sam was once his and then was not, remembering the countless men and women he'd taken afterwards as a testament to his moving on, not a single one of them being able to smile at him in the early morning like Sam did all those times they found themselves in the same bedroom together.

 

The crinkle of Sam's eyes as he was just coming out of sleep couldn't be replicated by any other softness even if someone tried their hardest. It was enviable the way he was able to greet morning with such casualty, frustrating because the first thing John did was wrinkle his brow at the thought of another spectacular night between them coming to an unfortunate end, but more beautiful than John cared to admit.

 

In a way man is more like animal than science cares to suggest, according to John. They both find comfort in each other then something tears them apart. Now they are together again, albeit in a different environment under arguably different circumstances, but still the issue lingers between them on what they used to be, what they ought to be, and what they will be in the weeks and months to come. Not all of it can be answered in the backseat of a town car so John does what he knows best, leans forward to let his lips drag against Sam's cheek in what he hopes is a gesture of comfort and reassurance that not everything between them is bitter.

 

"Again, I'm sorry about her," John repeats and feels Sam sigh with his lips still lingering just near the corner of Sam's mouth. "I know what she meant to you." Sam feels that wave of upset coming back at a fever pitch so he too makes his move, puts his arms around John's shoulders not expecting John to do the same for him. For precious moments they remain in the embrace of one another, not having done it in ages but knowing precisely what to do. And for John, it's enough. It's little but so much, all at the same time.


	2. Chapter 2

Sam walks into his office one day when he sees it.

 

It's a little thing, all floppy ears and yellow gold fur marked red around the neck by way of a big bow, and it sits rather patiently in a wicker basket on his desk, his bottom padded by a gingham blanket tucked into the inside of the basket. He can't believe it, thinks someone's playing a really shitty joke on him, then he steps closer to examine the note tucked into the place where the basket's handle meets the base.

 

_Sam – not Ella, but I was assured by someone well versed in these things that this fellow would serve your interests well. –John_

He lets the note slip from between his fingers. How did John know; he didn't tell anyone outside of Will about Ella's tumor and although John had shown up on that fateful night to help him inter Ella's body, Sam had, for the most part, kept that affair quiet.

 

God, hot tears are rising to his eyes and the puppy all but leaps for him, riptearing out of the basket and waiting patiently at the edge of the desk for Sam's next move. Sam gathers the puppy into the cradle his forearms make when brought tight to his body. It yelps excitedly and a wet nose prods at the sleeve of his dress shirt made bare by going without his suit jacket for most of the morning.

 

"You were very patient waiting in here for me, weren't you," he comments to the puppy, which settles down knowing he's being held by someone solid and trustworthy. There may or may not have been a pep talk on the way from the shelter – _Sam is far too good for someone like me, and he'll be all too good for you_ was what John had advised. The puppy had listened raptly with all the attention one as young as him could do it with. If he had taken any of it to heart wouldn't be known.

 

Sam gets a few kisses to his cheek for his troubles as the two sit down at his desk chair. The puppy in his arms is very slight, small size indicated he couldn’t be more than a couple of weeks old. He's telltale golden retriever like Ella was, all golden on his arms and back but light yellow around his ears. To Sam he's the most precious thing he's ever had the fortune of seeing ever since Ella was put into the ground. And he can't understand for a second why John did this.

 

Maybe it was pity – Sam wasn't in the best of state when John found him frantically trying to bury Ella that night – or maybe it was something in John telling him otherwise. Nonetheless it was an all-too-obvious appeal to Sam's sense of forgiveness, an olive branch meant to cover both Ella and the downturn of the firm. Sam's going to have to take it, recognize those situations for what they are and what they continue to be as reoccurring events of his daily life, and for now he holds onto the puppy in his arms for dear life.

 

A soft knock on the door a few minutes later and Sam is scrambling to tuck the puppy into the nearest hiding hole, now a desk drawer, and he pauses when John walks in. Sam has still got tears in his eyes, which John only smiles at as his eyes meet Sam's.

 

"I take it the little fellow and you get along well," John remarks as Sam goes to rest at ease with the puppy still in the crook of his elbow. Sam nods, he can't deny the puppy's working hard to melt his heart without using a single spot of flame, and pulls the puppy's head up to rest under his chin. He sighs at the feeling of warm fur against his skin, not knowing it's been that long since this was once Ella.

 

When he looks back up at John he finds John's smile to be almost dazzling with praise at what he has done. "I had someone look into where you got Ella, and I gave the woman a call hoping she had some more just like her for you. You got lucky; one of Ella's brothers left behind a daughter who had that one in a litter a few weeks ago. I made the arrangements, picked him up, and here we are."

 

Sam can't stop smiling, physically has to bite back the smirk that wants to go across his face knowing that John went to lengths to secure this for him. He lets the puppy down onto the surface of the desk, lets him walk clumsily to and from where his basket is, and soon he settles back down onto the blanket and curls up with his muzzle resting on two paws.

 

"Thank you, John," Sam says finally, when the silence between them is spent observing the now-sleeping puppy on the desk. "Thank you. It hasn't been easy without Ella and…I didn't want to take the plunge and get another one. But now that I've got this one…" His finger trails gently over the puppy's soft head and again the corners of his mouth turn up. "I don't think I can give him back. I hope you don't mind."

 

John chuckles – he'll be more than happy to share the puppy if Sam's alright with it – and sits down at the chair by Sam's desk. He folds one leg over the other and tempts himself with a hand to the side of the puppy's belly, stroking gently. "I do hope you'll give him a proper name. The one the breeder had picked out for him wasn't very becoming of such a strapping dog." That chuckle turns to a low laugh. "She had his name down as 'Baby,' albeit the default name for a dog among many, one that doesn't have a fitting name yet."

 

Sam looks at the puppy again, finds himself unable to come up with one on the spot, then he thinks about it. When he and John were out and about, doing whatever it is they were doing when Mary and that life weren't calling just yet, they loved to play cards. John would play his best hand, most time that including an ace card, and something in Sam tells him to name this puppy after the best part of what Sam and John once were in simpler times.

 

So, he does.

 

"Ace," Sam states with a voice hushed in respect to the sleeping puppy. "You played cards with me and you never seemed to be without your ace card. This is your ace card, John. You didn't have the best of hand with me until you did this. This means more to me than a hand of cards, it's… everything I could have asked of you given all that's happened between us. And I don't know if I can thank you anymore, but –"

 

Sam's cut off by John standing from his seat, walking over to stand near Sam with one hand finding just beneath Sam's jaw, tilting his face to his to kiss him softly once, twice, so slow yet thorough it makes Sam's stomach do treacherous flips.

 

The puppy on the desk, the testament to something renewed between them, sleeps on without a clue in the world.


End file.
